


Romance Shit With Ransom & Holster

by willindisguise



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willindisguise/pseuds/willindisguise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ransom will stand in front of him, twining his fingers together in an attempt to keep them from shaking. Then, voice soft and low and so crushingly hopeful, he’ll lay it all out, clear as a sunrise for Holster to see. He’ll say things like “I love you, and I really hope that’s okay.” and “I want you to be kissing me at parties, not them.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Romance Shit With Ransom & Holster

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh so this has been a wip for months that I finally finished. Yikes!! 
> 
> Come say hi to me at pxrsephonewrites.tumblr.com

**( i  -- the art of the flirt )**

 

“Oh, oh _Bitty_. My sweet summer child. My beautiful cinnamon roll. Mon petit fromage. Mon --”

 

“ _Adam Birkholtz_. You’re gonna want to stop talking sometime in the next three seconds or with God as my witness I will make you regret it.”

 

There are few things scarier than Eric Bittle when he decides to be sharp with you. Holster learned this a very long time ago, and even now it sends a chill through his very bones. Eric Bittle is scarier than Lord Voldemort. Eric Bittle could make Sauron cower in fear, or the Wicked Witch go scampering right back West. It’s something about the cold edge his voice takes on, like maybe there’s a little blizzard settling deep in his usually sunshiney bright chest.

 

Ransom clasps a hand on his shoulder, perhaps in a show of solidarity, or, more likely, in an effort to hold him back and make Bitty pay attention to the person he _isn’t_ currently snarking at.

 

“Ignore him, Bits. He gets like this.” Ransom says, voice soft. “Just keep in mind, we’re trying to _help_ you.”

 

Bitty sighs, warming up just slightly. “I don’t see how I should be trusting you two with something like this.”

 

They share a look. A meaningful look. Holster smiles, and Ransom smiles back, and in perfect synchronicity they let out a soft chuckle.

 

“Oh, Bitty, Bitty, Bitty --” Holster starts, before feeling Ransom’s sharp elbow dig into his side. Ransom picks up where he left off, much more reasonable and straightforward. “Trust us, Bitty. We’re the Kings of Flirting. We reign supreme.”

 

“Hundreds of girls have fallen to our flirting ways.”

 

Ransom grins. “Guys, too.”

 

“Oh, Jimmy. What a lad. Songs are still being sung about the epicly sweet way Ransom made him fall head over heels in love.”

 

“Then how come I’ve never seen _Jimmy_ around?” Bitty says, slowly crossing his arms over his chest in the process.

 

“Alas, t’was not meant to be in the end.” Holster sighs, forlorn and perhaps a tad overly dramatic.

 

Equally solemn, Ransom adds, “It was him, not me.”

 

In a shadow of the way Ransom had done it moments ago, Holster clasps a conciliatory hand on Ransom’s shoulder. “You’ll always have the memories of Winter Screw together.”

 

Ransom’s eyes light up. Like fireworks, Holster thinks. Like the most beautiful thing. “Which,” he says, loftily, “Brings us back to the point.”

  
“Indeed it does!”

 

Bitty sighs.

 

“Oh, come on. It’s easy.” Ransom grips Bitty by the shoulders, maneuvering him so that he’s pointed directly at the target. “Just go over there, smile real big, play up the cute southern belle thing you’ve got going on, and ask that motherfucking to be your date.”

 

“But I’m not even sure if he’d like me.” Bitty says, voice edged with a panic. “Or if I like him, for that matter.”

  
“You said you thought he was cute.” Holster interjects. “Thinking someone is cute is one of the first steps toward liking them.”

 

“And I bet he thinks you’re cute too. You’re extremely cute and he would be stupid _not_ to.”

 

“Very true. You’re a catch, Bits.”

 

“Awh, _shucks_...you guys.” Bitty says, and Holster cannot quite see the charmed and bashful and grateful look on his face, but he knows that its there all the same. And it strikes him then how quickly Eric Bittle became one of his favourite people. This sweet, charming boy from the south. The warmth in his voice makes Holster smile more, and makes him forget the chill that had been in it briefly.

 

“Just be confident, okay. You know you’re awesome. If you go up there with confidence and just give it your best chance, that’ll be the best thing you can do. And remember, just like Gretzky said: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

 

Bitty takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and nods. “Wish me luck?”

 

“Every ounce there is.” Holster says, and watches proudly as Bitty marches off.

 

 

 

 

**( ii -- the requited and the unrequited )**

 

“Well.” Lardo says, succinct. She flips a strand of hair out of her face and takes a long sip from her red party cup. Ransom isn’t sure exactly _what_ she’s drinking, only that it's clearly far stronger than anything he could have managed to concoct.

 

Ransom, for his part, lets out a sigh. “Yep.” He states, blandly. His eyes have been caught on Holster for the better part of a half hour, alcohol feeding the need to just look and look and keep looking, even when he feels he may drown in out. Holster, he thinks, is annoyingly attractive. Annoyingly blond and annoyingly tall and annoyingly good natured.

 

Annoyingly making out with a rather cute puck bunny, too. Which, granted, is nothing new at all. Ransom isn’t jealous so much as he is....okay, really very jealous.

 

“Don’t spend all night pinning, please. Its _boring_.” Lardo says, because she is apparently an all seeing, all knowing entity.

 

“Um, Shitty?” Ransom says, because he is apparently a bit of a bitch when he’s drinking.

 

She just looks at him for a long minute, before letting out a sigh. “Point taken, douchebag.”

 

His eyes skirt one more time around the party, finally tearing themselves away from Holster. Everybody seems to be having the time of their lives. Everybody except for him and Lardo. _Ugh_ . He _hated_ feeling this weird and pathetic. And he has to wonder when exactly this started. When his crush on Holster stopped being small and cute and utterly ignorable when it came down to it. When it stopped being something he could push aside and ignore. When did it become something that is maybe significantly more important than a crush.

 

See, Justin Oluransi is a man who likes to consider his options. He likes to take ideas and possibilities and run them through in his head until he’s reached a conclusion that makes sense, until he can logically determine what the best course of action to take is. Holster often distracts him from this, makes it impossible to be calm and rational and take things slow. But right now, Holster isn’t with him. So right now, Ransom considers the possibilities.

 

_It could go like this:_ He walks over to Holster the very second that Holster has removed himself from the girl. He smiles, calm and slow, and asks if they can talk about something very very important. And because Holster knows him so well, Holster will suggest that they go outside and talk on the porch, away from the distraction and noise of the party.  Holster leans up against the white railing, and looks at him with keen, understanding eyes. Ransom stands in front of him, attempting quite valiantly to stop himself from shaking. Then, voice soft and low, he’ll lay it all out, clear as a sunrise for Holster to see. He’ll say things like “I love you, and I really hope that’s okay.” and “I want you to be kissing me at parties, not them.”

  
And Holster will smile at him, maybe. He’ll smile in the way that makes Ransom’s insides bubble up, reminiscent of the only glass of champagne he ever had. Brief and beautiful and sweet. He’ll feel the same way. And Holster will lean forward, touch his soft fingers against Ransom’s cheek, and they’ll be _kissing_.

 

_It could happen like this_ : He walks over to Holster the very second that Holster has removed himself from the girl, and Holster will still be dazed and smiling and a little bit breathless.. He smiles, calm and slow, and asks if they can talk about something very very important. And because Holster knows him so well, Holster will suggest that they go outside and talk on the porch, away from the distraction and noise of the party.  Holster leans up against the white railing, and looks at him with clean, cool eyes. He looks untroubled, like he is forming an hypothesis in his head, one that will claim that Ransom is creating a small problem inside his head, and all Holster will have to do is calmly help him reason it out. Ransom will stand in front of him, twining his fingers together in an attempt to keep them from shaking. Then, voice soft and low and so crushingly hopeful, he’ll lay it all out, clear as a sunrise for Holster to see. He’ll say things like “I love you, and I really hope that’s okay.” and “I want you to be kissing me at parties, not them.”

  
And Holster will laugh at him, maybe. He’ll laugh in the way that makes Ransom’s insides bubble up and crumble all at once. He’ll laugh like it’s the funniest joke that he has ever heard, and it will slowly fade away as he takes in the look on his friend’s face, and realise that Ransom isn’t joking at all. His eyes will grow sad, and he’ll reach out to clasp a hand on Ransom’s shoulder. He’ll smile kindly and say that while he is flattered, he doesn’t feel that way about Ransom. He’ll say that they should just stay bros. And Ransom will resign himself to a life of being so close, but not quite at the place he wants to be. He’ll resign himself to it because even a small part of Holster is better than not having any of him.

  


_It could happen like this, though he doubts it:_ Ransom will walk up to Holster, his best friend in the entire world, the source of all of his joy these past years, and he will go through the same motions as before. Holster will be kiss dazed and beautiful, and Ransom will want nothing more than to pull him close and show him what a real kiss is like. He’ll ask Holster to talk about something important, and they’ll go outside. Ransom will bare his soul, and Holster, having finally given in to the stereotypical jock awfulness that plagues so many in their community, will punch Ransom square in the jaw.

 

Ransom, having lost his best friend, will spend the night drinking copiously and licking his wounds.

 

“What’s wrong with him?” He hears Bitty say. “I can hear the gosh darn cogs turning in there.”

 

When he flinches to the side to look at the source of the voice, he finds a more than tipsy Eric Bittle leaning rather close to his own head, as if he had been peering inside Ransom’s ears.

 

“Hes pining.” Lardo says. “Its boring.”

 

Bitty says “Oh,” voice soft and heartbreakingly understanding. “Pining. Okay, that makes sense.”

 

He shakes his head and takes another long sip of his drink, alcohol burning down his throat. _Pining_. No, just thinking. He lets out a long sigh. He knows that Holster would never be so cruel to him, but fear has always battled logic in his mind. While logic is reliable and trustworthy, fear knows how to play dirty with him, and usually wins out in the end.

 

He can feel Bitty tracking the path of his gaze, and feels Bitty shift the second his own eyes land on Holster. Ransom hears another soft, and significantly more weighty sigh from Bitty. “Oh, _darling_.” Bitty says, and he sounds like he wishes he could wrap Ransom up in the softest blanket he owns and force feed him twelve pies.

 

“I know.” Ransom says, “Lesson one, right? Never fall in love with a straight boy.” And that is, maybe, perhaps, just a little bit unfair. Because Ransom is one of the few people who eventually learned the language of the Bittle. The language of the Bittle comes in soft sighs and dreamy stares and vague statements. And pies, excessive amounts of pies. Ransom is near fluent in what anything Bitty does means. So he knows, he knows, that when Bitty says not to fall in love with straight boys, he meant ‘under no circumstance should you fall in love with your team captain, Jack Zimmerman.’

 

But Bitty just looks at him for a second, sadder and softer again. And nods, just a little bit. Because Ransom thinks, maybe, if he hadn’t said it, Bitty would have encouraged this thing he’s feeling for Holster. Bitty would have said ‘you two would be so cute together’ or thought it was meant to be. But vaguely alluding to his feelings for Jack makes everything a lot more real.

 

So Bitty doesn’t say: _you two would be so cute together_. He says: “Never fall in love with a straight boy.”

 

 

 

 

 

**( iii - conservation efforts in frat environments )**

 

Justin Oluransi is a delicate ecosystem. A careful mix of a thousand different hopes and dreams and passions that all eventually round out and form one of the most beautiful people Holster has ever met. A fucking coral reef. If you disturb him too much, if you alter too many aspects of his environment, if you set off a chain reaction that will ultimately lead to a shock to his system, Ransom will break.

 

He’s very passionate about conservation, when it comes to Justin Oluransi.

 

And he swears to god, he can feel when something is going wrong from miles away. Like hes a fucking Jedi and when Rans freaks out he can feel it rippling through the force. As chilling as thousands of voices calling out in fear and suddenly being silenced.

 

It's in the air the second he walks through the doors of the Haus.

 

Bitty and Chowder are in the kitchen. Bitty doing the dishes, and Chowder gazing covetously at the oven. He can smell the pie cooking, and okay, he can totally understand the way Chowder is looking at it.

 

“Bits. Chow.” He says, dropping his bag carefully on a chair. Bitty glances over his shoulder, a small smile slipping into place. “Have you seen --”

 

“Rans?” Bitty asks, and there’s a tinge of warm worry in his voice, honey sweet and almost fatherly. Holsters stomach coils tighter. “He’s in your room. I think hes, um…”

 

Holster his nods, holding up a hand in a gesture that he means to convey a self-assured _‘Yeah, its cool. I can tell’_ before turning and starting to make his way out of the kitchen, the path up to their attic bedroom clear in his head.

 

“ … I think _maybe_ he wants to be left alone, Adam.”

 

He pauses, hand resting idly on the door as he glances back over his shoulder. There’s a strange set to Bitty’s shoulders, determined yet uncertain in the warm light streaming in from the windows. Sometimes, Bitty looks like a golden god, and it’s a little bit frightening. And it’s partly the tone of his voice, too, when it comes down to it. One part ice queen and one part protective southern mamma bear. (One part _hey, i’m a little pissed, and I could fuck you up_.)  Chowder, for his part, is looking back and forth between the two of them like he has no idea whats going on, like mommy and daddy are about to have a fight and it’ll upset him or something.

 

“Huh? Nah, man. Bits. C’mere. Listen. He had like, a bio exam today. Hes probably just stressed out over it. Which is like, fine, you know, part of his method. But the exam is over and he shouldn’t keep wallowing in --”

 

Bitty’s mouth coils tight. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I think he’s --”

 

“I _think_ I know Rans a little bit better than you, Bitty. He's my best friend.” He says, a darkly defensive edge to the words, the _it should be up to me_ left unspoken but lingering in the air regardless.

 

He doesn’t want to be annoyed about this. Doesn’t want to be annoyed by Bitty. Its a rarity to feel any negative emotion towards the boy, but there’s just something in the air today that sets him too much on edge. He’s turning to go again before he can see the way Bitty lets himself deflate a little bit with a sigh, just barely hearing the quiet. “Fine. Okay. Whatever.” and Chowder’s quiet response of  “Are you guys in a fight or something?”

 

He wishes it didn’t make him feel guilty.

 

He makes a mental note to apologise for snapping, later. Maybe with a pumpkin spiced latte.

 

When he finally reaches the top of the attic stairs, he sees the room draped in the soft, gauzy light that comes from the curtained windows. Ransom rarely closes the curtains of their room, but maybe he felt like the overwhelming sunshine outside didn’t adequately reflect his mood.

 

Holster casts his gaze around the room, eventually identifying the Ransom shaped bundle of blankets on the top bunk. His heart aches, a little bit.

 

He climbs the first two rungs of the ladder, resting half on Ransom’s bunk with his forearms.

 

“Anybody home?” He asks, softly.

 

“Nope.” Comes soft and muzzled from the inside of the blanket lump.

 

“Come on. How’d it go, man?”

 

“I’ll never be a doctor. I’m gonna fail my senior year. I’m going to have to be an accountant like my father.”

 

Holster smiles, soft, pulling himself more properly up onto the mattress to sit at Ransom’s feet. He rests a hand on the Rans shaped lump and rests it there. “Dude. Uncool. Economics student, here.”

 

Ransom lets out what must be a very muffled version of the word **_sorry_ ** , and Holster sighs. “You’re never going to be an accountant, Rans. You’d be a terrible accountant. But what you are going to be is a fucking **_amazing_ ** doctor.”

 

“An amazing doctor who failed his senior year?”

 

“Well, what’d  you get on the assignment?”

 

A long, heavy silence. Holster squints his eyes in suspicion at the lump. He’s no stranger to the words that can be conveyed by Ransom-silences. He has to smile to himself, amused and wry and a little bit sad. Because Ransom, he knows, cares too much. He expects himself to be better  than anyone and everything. He expects himself to be infallible. And Holster loves that, he does. He loves every single thing that makes Justin who he is. But sometimes it leads to things like this; like Justin wallowing under his blankets because he got a grade that was probably only slightly lower than an A.

 

“Okay.  How about this? You study really hard for your exam, starting tomorrow. And I’ll help you. I’ll make sure you don’t fail your senior year, and I’ll make sure you get into the best damn medical school you can name, and I’ll make sure the rest of the guys take it easy on you and no one bothers you in the library. All starting tomorrow.”

 

Ransom peeks out from under his blankets, all soulful eyes and beautiful beautiful expressions of curiosity. “Tomorrow?”

 

“Yeah, bro. Totally tomorrow. But only on the condition that you come get like, the most awesome milkshake in the world with me. And pancakes.” _Comfort food_.

 

Ransom smiles, a soft and small and hesitant thing. And Holster feels the universe shift back on its correct axis, feels tension melt more fully out of his shoulders. Ransom smiles, and all is right with the world again.

  


 

 

 

 

**( iv -- dating for dummies )**

 

Dates, Holster had decided quite suddenly and awkwardly and very much in Holster-fashion, right in the middle of one, were kind of bullshit.

 

He’d thought in the past that he honestly might be good at them. He’d gone on more than he could count. Maybe thousands, maybe hundreds. He’d always skated through them, easy as could be, easy as breathing. He was a confident man who knew what he liked and knew what he liked to talk about, a pro at small talk and all that “getting to know you” bullshit.

 

Ransom clears his throat, eyes soft and mouth set in an awkward line as he gazes across the table at Holster.

 

Okay. Maybe Holster was good at dates. Maybe he was just bad at dates with _Ransom_. Which was quite frankly the stupidest thing he had ever thought of. He had never, not once in his entire life, felt too awkward to talk to Justin Oluransi.

  
And yet, here he was.

 

His fingers skimmed over his cutlery, fidgeting restlessly as he turned his mind over for something to say.

 

“So, uh. Practice was pretty brutal this morning.”

 

Ransom perked up. “Remind me to remind Jack that practice after kegsters is never a good idea.”

 

“Yeah, bro. I thought I was gonna throw up the second we got moving.”

 

If he could have slapped himself over the head, he would have. He was pretty sure mentioning an urge to vomit in front of your new boyfriend on your very first date was kind of a faux pas.

 

Ransom, bless his heart, just gives Holster a knowing smile, and lets silence settle back over them.

 

Holster hates silence.

 

He watches Ransom finger the table cloth carefully. They’re at one of the nicer joints in town, and its a soft white fabric that Holster will admit he himself was quite impressed by. He was too used to eating in the college hall, at tables that very often had graphic and lewd depictions of the male anatomy drawn on them.

 

The situation really, really, really isn’t helped by the set of Ransom’s mouth, which Holster can’t look at now without remembering the way he had pressed close and kissed it the night before. Without thinking about how embarrassingly desperate he was to do it again, and again, and again, and every night for as long as Ransom would let him.

 

He didn’t want to mess this up. Not when he was already one step away from being what he thought was completely head over heels in love. He was very familiar with the feeling of being that enamoured with someone. Had felt it loads of times with girls before, just the same as he was feeling it now. It made him feel star struck and gut-twistingly nervous to be feeling it for Ransom, who had always been so easy to define before now.

 

“Do you think,” Ransom starts to say, like a scientist hesitantly sharing a ludicrous hypotheses with a coworker, “That we’re doing this wrong?”

 

“Do you?” Holster asked, a flash of dread in his bones.

 

“It just feels...I don’t know, a little bit awkward.” Ransom says, eyes meeting Holsters over the table. “We don’t _do_ this, you know?”

 

And, the thing is, Holster does know. He knows all too well. He has never sat at a table this fancy with Justin except for...double dates and Thanksgiving dinner. And then, Justin was a comforting weight next to him, their shoulders brushing that that delightfully distracting way they do sometimes. But **_now_ **. Now Justin is sitting across from him, and while being able to look right at his face whenever he wants is really quite lovely, he also has to admit that it feels fucking odd. “Yeah,” he admits, soft and open and nervous still. “Yeah, I get you.”  

 

Justin’s mouth relaxes a touch, takes on a familiar softness that Holster is starting to learn might mean: _i adore you_.  “So, let's ditch. Let's go get a burger and a milkshake and make Bitty feed us pie when we get back to the Haus.”

 

And Holster thinks: I’m in love with you.

  
And Holster says, sighing, and embarrassing, and much too soon: “ _I’m in love with you._ ”


End file.
